Welcome to my set review where I will pick my five favourite cards of each colour from the upcoming Brothers’ War booster set!
Given that The Brothers’ War also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article. I also won’t be touching on reprints in either review.
My general thoughts on reprints are this: Was it expensive before and is it inexpensive now? Do you want to buy the card at its more affordable price? If you said yes to all of these, hey! Congratulations, you’re buying some cards! Be sure to check out threekingsloot.com to see if we have them and pick up as many as you need.
Without further ado, here are my favourite White cards from the set and the accompanying Commander set.
What’s not to like about a creature that will no doubt draw you cards at your end step? Platoon Dispenser costs five, but this is easily reduced by cards like Cloud Key, The Immortal Sun, Foundry Inspector, Etherium Sculpter, etc.
It is entirely possible to bring the cost of this down to 0, but that takes some building around. Any deck that loves Mycosynth Golem loves this. As long as it has White, that is.
This is also where Powerstones come in. Powerstones cannot pay for nonartifact spells. Platoon Dispenser and its ability are eligible for Powerstones to pay. At the end step, if you control two or more other creatures, you draw a card. And if before your end step, if you don’t have two other creatures, the ability can help make that happen.
All this isn’t even taking into account that this can be Unearthed. White is one of the primary colours for blink and flicker strategies. If you Unearth Platoon Dispenser with Conjurer’s Closet, you can hit your end step and get your card draw trigger and also flicker Platoon Dispenser. Because it was already headed to exile, it returns as a new object. I think there’s a lot to like in this card.
This is a card that was partly spoiled, but mistakenly labeled as costing WW and as a 2/2. Everybody was absolutely floored by it, but there were skeptics. I definitely did not believe it. It is very cool to have a type of Grand Abolisher effect in your command zone. This card is reminiscent of Krenko, Mob Boss and Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin in that Myrel makes tokens equal to the amount of a certain tribe (Soldiers) and has to attack.
With your opponents blocked from casting spells and activating abilities of most permanents, you have free reign during combat to pull tricks without any fear.
I’ll say that I am not excited about her in the 99 of dedicated token decks. My Thalisse, Reverent Medium deck can benefit from having a way to not only create tokens, but also to protect any sort of combo to end the game.
There are Boros soldier decks out there that are going to snap pack the Shield of Argive into the 99 easily. Darien, King of Kjeldor might have a tag team partner for those who want to play with interchangeable commanders.
We just got Welcoming Vampire in Crimson Vow and here is another “welcoming” card that grows your hand when creatures enter. Welcoming Vampire cares about power two or less, but what if you’re playing Tendershoot Dryad and have the City’s Blessing? Your creation of creature tokens every upkeep is a lot less useful once you hit three power.
With Toscasia’s Welcome, it doesn’t matter what power your tokens are, you’ll get that card. Playing Ophiomancer in your Orzhov aristocrats deck? Have a card every upkeep, as long as you can sack the Snakes. Tendershoot Dryad, Beledros Witherbloom, Dragon Broodmother, Dreampod Druid, First Response, Koma, Cosmos Serpent, Seance, Tombstone Stairwell, Verdant Force, and Wolverine Riders create a token creature each upkeep.
If you play Ant Queen and have the mana up, you can keep creating the tokens on other players turns to make each activation a cantrip, too. Maybe Platoon Dispenser!
White finally has a Reclamation Sage. A 2/1 Vigilant creature means that you can swing when opponents are open. You can also make a deal if you need combat damage triggers or a safe attack. “Hey, I need to swing Loran for my Sword of the Animist trigger. If you let her through, I’ll tap her to give you a card.”
Making an ally is powerful in Commander. I think the ability to draw and offer another player a card is a good way to get favours at the table. It’s also a good way to get your opponents to misevaluate you. If you’re building Loran, that ETB effect is going to be important to you. Let your opponents cast the enchantments and artifacts that you’ve drawn them into… you get to blow them up.
I’ll keep this one short and sweet.
This is a powerful combo card that is so cool and weird. There is no limit to how many times you can do this, just when you can. You can only do it during your turn. Not sorcery speed. Anytime, during your turn, you can activate the ability to return a permanent you control to its owner’s hand and because the set cares about Unearth, it also gets around that.
Dockside Extortionist where you create six Treasures means that you have infinite mana unless somebody does something. If you have creatures with good ETBs that you want to retrigger with white in the deck, this is bound to be an amazing inclusion.
Oh, wait, no not just creatures. ANY PERMANENT!
“I choose to Oblivion Ring your commander.” “I’ll put it in my command zone.” “Great, I bring it back to my hand and can do it again.”
This is going into my clones deck. I cannot wait to make even more annoying use of my Clever Impersonator.
Honorable Mentions
And now, a list of my Honorable Mentions:
- Disciple of Caelus Nin – Teferi’s Protection a problem at your table? Screw with its caster.
- Kayla’s Command – Something about white getting a land tutor that also scries feels special, not to mention the combat trick and token making.
- Soul Partition – Get rid of something temporarily or save one of your own things. Elite Spellbinder in spell form. It’s interesting and has cEDH implications.
- Calamity’s Wake – cEDH people are freaking out over this.
- Great Desert Prospector – White loves making creatures, this ETBs and you’ve got lots of Powerstones to work with. Not bad.
- Airlift Chaplain – The occasional white self-mill strategies out there will appreciate the ability to bring something important back to hand while filling the yard.
- Powerstone Engineer – It’s not great, but it’s not bad and in the right deck, these pile up.
- Recommission – I love a reanimation effect. This costing Animate Dead mana and buffing a creature is awesome. It can return artifact OR creature three mana or less and there are lots of those worth bringing back.
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